7th
Coming Soon to a TV Near You, Feb. 8-14, 2010
Chinatown (TCM, Saturday, Feb. 13, 12:30 a.m.)
In these pages, I try spotlighting films that might not be widely known, but I’m making an exception here. If you haven’t seen Chinatown, make sure to set your TiVo — and shame on you for having lived your life without experiencing this classic noir thriller from the not-so-noir year of 1974.
Set in the Los Angeles of the late 1930s, the picture marked the perfect intersection between brilliant screenwriting and inspired direction. Robert Towne’s script is arguably one of the all-time best, winding through a labyrinthine conspiracy of profiteering, murder and sexual depravity. Every stitch of information presented in Towne’s dense, multi-layered narrative, whether it’s a snippet of dialogue or offhanded gesture, is there for a reason. Such muscular storytelling is the essence of great writing for cinema, and it is why Chinatown has long been deemed the gold standard of scripts.
Our guide through this tale, much of it loosely based on the actual early days of L.A., is two-bit gumshoe Jake Gittes (a never-better Jack Nicholson). After being duped in what appears to be a ho-hum case of trailing a philandering husband, Gittes finds himself immersed in a twisted plot that leads him to a mighty nervous mystery woman (Faye Dunaway), her sinister, rich-as-sin father (John Huston) and a vaguely treacherous past.
Not a moment falls flat or rings less than authentic. Director Roman Polanski, who has a memorable cameo as a knife-wielding nasty, builds suspense with surgical precision. Scenes unfold in long takes, placing us squarely in Gittes’ point of view as he tries piecing together why exactly people are drowning in the middle of a drought. The director also had a major hand in the script, excising Gittes’ voiceover narration and crafting an ending that reflected an American zeitgeist beaten down by war and political scandal.
The result is an unforgettable movie — even if the last line of dialogue commands you to do otherwise. – Phil Bacharach
Pickup on South Street (TCM, Wednesday, Feb. 10, 10 p.m.)
An interesting story has J. Edgar Hoover having lunch with producer Darryl F. Zanuck and director Samuel Fuller, and ripping into Fuller about his body of work, specifically Pickup on South Street. The objection Hoover had was a scene where pickpocket Skip McCoy asks, “Are you waving the flag at me?” He also complained about scenes where a Federal agent bribes an informer and may other things. Zanuck backed up Fuller by telling Hoover he didn’t know anything about making movies.
Pickup on South Street tells the story of a three-strike pickpocket who continues a life of crime despite one more conviction condemning him to a life in prison. Unfortunately, he bites off more than he can chew when he picks a woman’s purse and ends up with a microfilm meant for Russian Communists. With the FBI, a police officer with a grudge, and the Communists after him, he must find a way out before he finds himself a part of Potter’s Field.
I find the Hoover story amusing because, if nothing else, this film noir is what patriotism means to the smaller insignificant population on the streets. The small-time pickpocket doesn’t care about the war against the Communists and only wants money. But at the end of the day, the Communists are the enemy and are foiled. The movie also possesses some great performances, from lead Richard Widmark to the always amazing six-time Oscar nominee Thelma Ritter. Ritter delivers one of the better supporting performances from a film noir actress and the movie is all the better for it. - Shawn S. Lealos
